Advertisement
Published: April 25th 2008
Edit Blog Post
And so straight into the heart of south east Asia... We took a flight from Singapore to Siem Reap in the north of Cambodia and this was where the culture shock really happened. I guess it's been fairly straight forward travelling since we arrived in New Zealand. I'd forgotten what it was like to have to repeatedly say 'No thanks' everytime you walk down the street. The tuk-tuk drivers here are like the taxi drivers in Peru- beeping their horns at you all the time. There are so many children begging or trying to sell something or other and like the children in South America they are clever enough to know that if they can engage you in conversation you are more likely to give them something. One little guy was able to list off the prime ministers of England. That said I was surprised to find that they might not just be as hungry or as badly off as they would like you to believe. We were sitting in an outdoor terrace of a cafe one day and this little guy asked someone at the table beside us for some food. They guy offered him his soup which he refused
and asked instead for his chicken so he couldn't have been that hungry. Another time a little girl asked us for money to get some food. I know you are not supposed to give money as it just encourages the begging culture but sometimes your resolve weakens. Anyway when we offered her riels (the cambodian currency) she told us she didn't want it and asked for US dollars or thai bhats instead!! Who said beggars couldn't be choosers?? But this is probably just further confirmation that these children are being sent out to beg by others.
In actual fact the US dollar really seems to be the official currency here- prices are quoted in USD everywhere, which is handier as there are 4,100 riels in a dollar. Riels are pretty useless.
We arrived in Siem Reap at the start of the 'Happy Khmer New Year'- a three day festival to celebrate the new year. There was plenty of parties/parades/fireworks etc. and we were amazed to learn that the vast majority of employees get holidays for the three days- including the police!!! Can you imagine what it would be like in Dublin if there were no Gardai on duty
A tuk-tuk in Siem Reap
A very luxurious mode of transport! on new years eve......
From Siem Reap we went to see Temples of Angkor, often referred to as the eighth wonder of the world. The buildings/ruins are really impressive but there are so many of them and our guide was fairly insistent that we see them all. He was very proud at the end of the day to have driven us around the entire temple region north of Siem Reap- a tour that most people do in three days. I was definitely templed out by the end of it.
The rest of out time in Siem Reap was spent browsing around the fairly small town- the people here seem really happy and I guess having the temples so close means they are well used to tourists. We had some very good food in this town and some that wasn't so good.
From Siem Reap we took a bus to Phnom Penh, the capital. The bus journey was fairly hairy with the driver relentlessly beeping the horn and slamming on the brakes. There seems to be little or no traffic law- basically the bigger vehicle on the road has the right of way and just beeps everyone else
off the road. There are 4 million people living in Phnom Penh, a lot of whom live in extreme poverty. We found it quite a sad place. Even though many people in Siem Reap were living in poor conditions, the place had much more life to it than the capital city. On our first night in Phnom Penh we watched the film 'The Killing Fields' which gave us a bit of an insight into why the county is the way it is. We followed this up with trips to the Tuol Sleng Museum- a former high school turned prison during the Khmer Rouge regime and the killing fields of Choeung Ek both of which were fairly depressing to say the least. Neither of us knew too much about the Khmer Rouge before we came to Cambodia but we are definitely a bit wiser now and you would have to have a lot of sympathy for the people of this country. It is estimated that about 2 million people were killed between 1975 and 1979 during the reign of the Khmer Rouge and many more in the years of civil war that followed.
Apart from discovering the history of the
country in Phnom Penh we got our first taste of the crazy asian motor bikers and tuk-tuk drivers. Crossing the street was not one of my favourite passtimes and I usually had to be dragged or pulled...
After a few days in Phnom Penh it was time to move on to the next country.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.132s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 7; qc: 45; dbt: 0.0635s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb